To help with starting work on including a new application, use fdroid import to set up a new template project. It has two modes of operation, starting with a cloned git repo:

git clone https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient
cd fdroidclient
fdroid import

Or starting with a URL to a project page:

fdroid import --url=http://address.of.project

When a URL is specified using the --url= flag, fdroid import will use that URL to find out information about the project, and if it finds a git repo, it will also clone that. For this to work, the URL must point to a project format that the script understands. Currently this is limited to one of the following:

1. GitLab - https://gitlab.com/<PROJECTNAME>/<REPONAME>
2. GitHub - https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT>
3. Bitbucket - https://bitbucket.org/<USER>/<PROJECT>/
4. NotABug - https://notabug.org/<USER>/<PROJECT>
5. Git - git://<REPO> or https://<REPO>

Depending on the project type, more or less information may be gathered. A bare repo URL, such as the git:// one, is the least preferable option of all, since you will have to enter much more information manually. While gradle based builds should be auto-detected for all types, links to issue trackers can not be set for plain git projects. You can also use one of the following arguments to pre-fill your metadata:

• -u <URL>, --url=<URL>: Project URL to import from.
• -s <DIR>, --subdir=<DIR>: Path to main android project subdirectory, if not in root.
• -c <CATEGORIES>, --categories=<CATEGORIES>: Comma separated list of categories.
• -l <LICENSE>, --license=<LICENSE>: Overall license of the project.
• --revision <REV>: Allows a different revision (or git branch) to be specified for the initial import

If the import is successful, a metadata file will be created. You will need to edit this further to check the information, and fill in the blanks.

If it fails, you’ll be told why. If it got as far as retrieving the source code, you can inspect it further by looking in tmp/importer where a full checkout will exist.

A frequent cause of initial failure is that the project directory is actually a subdirectory in the repository. In this case, run the importer again using the --subdir option to tell it where. It will not attempt to determine this automatically, since there may be several options.